West Virginia’s half-full schools could house North Dakota public-school population, report finds 

West Virginia schools have enough empty seats to accommodate all of North Dakota’s public school students, a recent report concluded. Yet public school spending in The Mountain State has continued to grow. 

“Despite the siren song of the tax-and-spend left, simply spending more on government-run education will do nothing to fix the inherent flaws in our school funding formula or help our kids succeed,” said Jason Huffman, state director of Americans for Prosperity-West Virginia (AFP-WV), which released the study.

Just this week, after the report was released, the state Department of Education announced that public-school enrollment had dropped by more than 8,000 students this year, falling to 226,687 from 234,957 last year.

“I think some of the decline can certainly be attributed to overall population loss, but because the school enrollment loss is outpacing that overall population loss we have to look to other explanations,” said Georgia Hughes-Webb, the department’s director of data analysis and research, as reported by West Virginia MetroNews.

“It could be that more families are choosing non-public options. We don’t quite have all the data we need to fully answer that question, but certainly, given the comparison between enrollment loss and population loss there are bigger factors at play.”

Putting ‘resources, infrastructure’ over students’ needs

By comparing county-level school building utilization data with 2025-26 enrollment numbers, AFP-WV found that the state’s schools are operating at about 55% capacity on average.

The state has a total of 416,000 seats. The more than 185,000 empty seats could comfortably accommodate the entire public-school system in North Dakota, which also experienced an enrollment decline during the 2025-26 academic year.

Meanwhile, state, local and federal school funding has ballooned from $4.149 billion in fiscal 2023 to $4.812 billion in 2025, the study noted.

“Every dollar spent maintaining a half-empty building diverts dollars that should be spent serving the kids who are sitting in our classrooms,” said Matt Gallagher, AFP-WV’s deputy state director. “The current funding formula relies on arbitrary, rigid ratios tied to overall enrollment, causing policymakers at the county level to prioritize resources and infrastructure over what students actually need.”

Even the state’s education board is paying attention.

As previously reported by Heartlander News, the board’s president, Paul Hardesty, acknowledged that public school is only one of many educational options now available to families.

“You might not like what I have to say, but I don’t really care. School choice is here to stay,” he said this summer at a board meeting, adding, “We need to make our option more accommodating to parents and children.”